Awards & Recognition

Alhamdulillah. Sharjeel Pathan, Founder and CEO of Aqlithos (Private) Limited, stood in front of a hall of founders, mentors, and business leaders at Youth Digital Summit 2025 and came away with second prize at Youth Shark Tank. The competition carried the theme Igniting Innovation, Funding the Future. It was a public pitch, not a private meeting: a young company explaining its work, taking questions, and being judged beside other new ventures.

The summit was organized by the Media Cell of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan. Emerging entrepreneurs shared the program with people who build, fund, and advise companies. For Aqlithos, the moment mattered because Sharjeel was there as founder, speaking for the software and artificial intelligence practice he had started. The jury recorded for this page is Usman Chughtai, Imtinan Ahmed, Irfan Malik, Salman Shaikh, and Hammaad Yousuf.

The second prize is the achievement. Photographs from the prize distribution show a Youth Shark Tank cheque dated July 7, 2025, payable to Sharjeel Pathan for PKR 100,000. An official certificate is not on this page yet, so the company is not described as the name written on a certificate. The cheque names Sharjeel Pathan.

The Aqlithos team attended the prize distribution ceremony at the Women Institute of Science and Humanity in Islamabad, a gathering held to celebrate academic excellence and innovation. The day belonged to the same Youth Shark Tank result: second prize for Sharjeel Pathan, Founder and CEO of Aqlithos, at Youth Digital Summit 2025.

In the ceremony photograph, Sharjeel and the people with him hold a large Youth Shark Tank cheque. The cheque is printed by Innovative Private Limited. It is dated July 7, 2025, made out to Sharjeel Pathan, and written for PKR 100,000 — one hundred thousand rupees. That is the amount visible on the cheque. It records the prize presented to him, and it does not name Aqlithos (Private) Limited as the payee.

A second photograph shows the team outside on the steps, with the prize cheques from the ceremony. A third shows a seated session from the summit, the Youth Digital Summit mark visible in the room. These frames are the public record of the day in Islamabad: a founder, the team that came with him, and a prize that followed a pitch.

The wall does the introduction. Behind the group, dark letters spell Abbottabad University of Science and Technology, and in front of that name Sharjeel Pathan, Founder and CEO of Aqlithos, stands with the Youth Shark Tank cheque. The visit was an honor to meet the Vice Chancellor. The reason was already settled: second place at Youth Shark Tank during Youth Digital Summit 2025.

Professor Dr. Tahir Irfan Khan, Vice Chancellor of AUST, received the team, together with Shah i room Khan, Registrar of AUST, and Dr. Sahibzada Yaseen Ahmed, Manager of the Business Incubation Center. The photograph does not label each face. Those are the names recorded for the meeting.

The cheque in the frame is the same Youth Shark Tank cheque dated July 7, 2025, printed by Innovative Private Limited, payable to Sharjeel Pathan for PKR 100,000. The team marks the result as a first for a university in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. This page records that milestone as they stated it. It does not create a second prize, and it does not rename the payee. The cheque still names Sharjeel Pathan.

Team Aqlithos was selected among the Top 100 startups across Pakistan for a six-week bootcamp at the National Incubation Center in Islamabad. The program was League of Launchers.

The front of the building settles the place. Blue letters over the glass read NIC Islamabad, and the team is on the steps. Inside, the backdrop carries Ignite, the Ministry of IT and Telecom, and the line Converge. Ignite. Thrive. The hall is marked League of Launchers: banners along the stage, a screen at the front of the room, and founders in the seats for talks.

The photographs follow the bootcamp rather than a single hour. The team sits in the audience, gathers around a table between sessions, and stands on the stage with the League of Launchers banners behind them. Other teams' names are printed on those banners. This page does not assign one of those names to Aqlithos, and it does not invent a rank inside the Top 100. The recognition is the selection: six weeks at NIC Islamabad, and a place among the Top 100 startups in the country.

Startup Pakistan sat down with the team for a podcast. The episode introduces Team Aqlithos as a startup from Abbottabad University of Science and Technology, now taking the company further through the NIC Islamabad League of Launchers program by Change Mechanics Pvt Ltd. They skipped the pitch deck. The conversation is about what inspired the idea, what keeps them going, and how they are finding their way through the early work of building a startup. Sharjeel Pathan is named with Aqlithos, Startupdotpk, and NIC Islamabad.